Jim Sargent's Reviews > A President in Our Midst: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Georgia

Kaye Minchew's study of A President in Our Midst: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 2016), is more than an excellent pictorial history of FDR's personal and political connections to his beloved Warm Springs, the mineral springs resort in southern Georgia. From the time he purchased the resort and surrounding land inn 1924 until his death on April 12, 1945, he was both a part-time loved and respected resident of Warm Springs. Perhaps more important, Roosevelt was also the moving force behind the Warm Springs Foundation for the fight against polio and its adjunct, the "March of Dimes." Beside the wide range of pictures with succinct explanations, Minchew deals well with topics such as his therapy and exercise in the pools there, his positive relations with polio patients as well as various Georgia residents, his important policies as President, his difficulties with Governor Eugene Tallmadge and Senator Walter George, and his personal ties with the closest of his own friends while at Warm Springs. For a pictorial history, this impressive book by Kaye Minchew is as good as it gets.